At Prospect Hill Forge in Waltham, we offer a chance to commune with your ancestors, to think the thoughts they thought and do the things they did. It's all entirely legal and contravenes the laws of neither time nor space.

I'm talking about Blacksmithing.

Not just watching it, but doing it. Taking a class in blacksmithing at Prospect Hill Forge will make you think differently about the railings, balconies, and window grills you see as you walk the streets of Beacon Hill and Back Bay, it will subtly change your perception of the world around you, it will challenge you physically and mentally, and in the end you will be more human for it.

Come, make something real, something tangible, and make it with your own hands. Try a craft that has been practiced for well over four thousand years and in that time has changed the course of human history.
 

Tongs to make Tongs... that gets its own page.

Well, partly it's the power trip.

Really.

We're working with steel here. I mean ... Steel.

For most people steel is immutable, permanent, unchangeable.
Nerves of steel. Man of steel. Bends steel with his bare hands.
Our language and culture are permeated with steel as a symbol of  strength.  

Say it with me in the most testosterone-laden voice you can muster, Steel.

We're also working with fire; which is powerful stuff all on its own...  but the fire we're working with? It's so hot that if we leave a piece of Steel in it for too long, it burns away. Away! Gone! Steel made to vanish! Now that's a hot fire.

As a smith, you take a piece of Steel and put one end into a fire so hot that you have to be careful the Steel doesn't burn away, and when you take it out, you hold in your bare hand a piece of Steel that is glowing, nearly burning at the other end, and with your hammer and your knowlege and your will you turn the Steel into whatever you want it to be. (The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up. Yours?)

And when it cools off, your work is permanent, immutable. Unchangeable by the common man.

I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty cool.  

-Carl